A PORTRAIT OF SELF-DESTRUCTION

Does rationality lead to atheist? Not according to the late German philosopher and atheist, Friedrich Nietzsche:

·       “I have no knowledge of atheism as an outcome of reasoning, still less an event; with me it is obviously instinct.” (Os Guinness, The Journey, 154)

The late British novelist and atheist, Aldous Huxley, concurred:

·       I had motives for not having the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption… The philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation… from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. (Ends and Means quoted by Guinness, 214-15)

Guinness adds that Huxley later turned to Eastern Mysticism “because he admitted that these early choices of meaninglessness had led him to despair.” (214)

When we reject God, we also reject any possible objective basis for both morality and meaning, condemning us to a flat, sterile, and barren world, bereft of depth, color, and contour. The Book of Proverbs illustrates a sorry plight that starts with pleasure but succumbs to pain:

·       “Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the LORD, would have none of my counsel and despised all my reproof, therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way, and have their fill of their own devices. For the simple are killed by their turning away, and the complacency of fools destroys them.” (Proverbs 1:29-32; ESV)